Q: You still like to hike? Where do you like to hike?

A: I do. We hike out in the desert mostly. I’ve hiked Mt Peale, about three years ago.

Q: Lots of talus slopes and lots of rocks?

A: Yes, and the mountains and up Fisher Valley.

Q: As far as social clubs and church gatherings, you’ve done all those things?

A: Yes, I’m very active in my church. I’m also active in the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. You don’t have to be LDS to be in the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. It’s for anyone who has pioneer ancestors that came to Utah before 1865 or 1869. There were quite a number of them. We do have members that are not LDs. That’s the way it should be. 

Q: Do you have things you’d like to change about Moab now?

A: I just wish everybody could get along better together. Everyone. People.

Q: Do you think this is different in Moab than in any other place?

A: Yes, I do. I think Moab has more diversity of different kinds of people, everything, churches, et., more than most of the towns in Utah.

Q: Does this diversity make for the bad feelings?

A: I don’t think with the churches, it does, but I think a lot of the people that have grown up here resent the people that come in and changing the names of all the canyons and all the different places. It was always named but they changed the name to something different. Thinking that they discovered everything, but they didn’t discover everything. We’d have them telling us, oh you ought to go here or go there and I found this and I found that, but we know, we’ve been there. That kind of stuff. Like I’m an old timer, we resent that they think they know more than we do and they resent that we have a thought of our own. They want to take over. A lot of them are very brilliant and some of the things they do are very great. But there is a division and that’s where I say I think I wish we could get along better. 

Q: The newcomers and the old timers?

A: Yes,

Q: Do you have any feelings about the tailings?

A: Yes, they are different from Bill’s because I want them moved. I don’t like the tailings near to the river and it might be going into the river. Poisons, I would like to see it moved.

Q: That should make for a happy family.

A: I did work at Atlas Minerals.

Q: You each have your own opinions.

A: We do. I certainly have my own opinions. I’m not a “yes person.”

Q: You spend a lot of time visiting the grandkids?

A: We do. We love going to visit out kids. The families are what it’s all about. Hallie and Bob’s Sixtieth Anniversary is today. Bob’s from the old Stewart family in town.

Q: Do you play golf?

A: I play occasionally; I play between 5 and 10 times a year so you can’t say I really play golf. I’m not really good at it. I’m glad that Bill has golf because he does enjoy it.

Q: Have we left out anything?

A: My parents were both born in Mexico. Old Mexico. My father came out of old Mexico in 1905 and he was only 5 years old. My mom’s family stayed there until Pancho Villa and his group were raiding them. They had to leave in wagons when she was 12 years old and take a few possessions and the family in the wagon. Just a few clothes and things. I loved to hear my mom’s stories about that. My dad was younger and he didn’t remember that much.

Q: Have you been to Mexico?

A: Bill and I took my mother back. A lot of the Mormons went down there because of polygamy. Probably the Young side did, by my mother was a Helquist and the Hatch side of her family had a little polygamy but that was way back in the olden days. They didn’t go because of polygamy; that traded land with some relatives. The got tired of living in Koosharem where it was cold, down south of Richfield. So they traded some land and went to Mexico. We have an interesting history. The ancestors came over with the pioneers. 

Q: Where did they come from?

A: The Youngs came from England and the Helquists came from Sweden; after they were in the United States, they were in Vermont and New York, I think, and then into Nauvoo, Illinois. My great-great-grandfather came with Brigham Young on the first wagon train that came and my great grandfather came on the second group. He was about 9 years old and he and his little brother came without parents or anything. He said they were like chore boys. They walked most of the way and had to get wood and things like that for the wagon train..

Q: Did you have relatives in the Hole in the Rock group?

A: No, that’s Bill’s side of the family. His great grandfather was in that group. His grandmother was only 6 months old when she came. They brought her over through the Hole in the Rock. We did take a trip to Escalante and over that rough road down into the top of where they went down over. We had been to the bottom where you look and can go up from Lake Powell, but we took the trip be Escalante about three years ago. That was a fun trip. It was a hard trip. They don’t really want you to go that way because the roads are terrible.

Q: We parked our car at the top and we went down the Escalante in our little boats, down to Lake Powell and then we walked up the Hole in the Rock. We had to hang on in places; it wasn’t just a walk.